Languages are still key to understanding

We would like to join our voices, from the humanities perspective, to the protest made by Michael Atiyah and others against the government's priorities ( Letters , 13 October). The threat to modern languages departments, at the universities of Swansea, Sussex and elsewhere, and the accompanying belittlement of the literature and culture of others, stems from a similar disregard for ethical values in the future of British society. We strongly endorse the call to support civilian, not military research. The deepest ethical arguments on the matters raised by the scientists' letter – health, the environment, just and unjust wars, the development of nuclear energy (let alone weapons) – need to be grounded in mutual understanding, which grows from minds turned outwards from their home cultures. Globalised networks make exchanges between peoples easier, but also tend to flatten the picture, and lose subtlety and relief. English dominates the www, but it is a limited kind of English, fascinating in itself (globish) and worth studying, but no substitute for the languages and the cultures themselves. Cultural cross-fertilisation, led by language but taking other forms as well, is key to historical understanding and contemporary interconnectedness. The more the world draws closer together through the web, the more technological and scientific innovation takes us to places unvisited, so much the more ethical and cultural interpretation becomes urgent. Given that so many of our European colleagues are bi- and tri-lingual, the UK will place itself at a huge disadvantage in the competition for research if we fail to ensure linguistic and cultural polyvocalism, as the report Language Matters (2009) warned. Marina Warner President Gillian Beer Past president British Comparative Literature Association